Radio December 22-28: Including Handel's Agrippina and Sugar and Spice

The winner of the BBC Magazine Opera Award, and a relaxed RNZ National Christmas morning.

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SUNDAY DECEMBER 23

Elvis's Gospel Music, Christmas morning.

Opera on Sunday (RNZ Concert, 3.00pm). Today features the recording of Handel’s Agrippina, with the Berlin Akademie für Alte Musik and Alexandrina Pendatchanska as Agrippina, that was this year’s winner of the BBC Music Magazine Opera Award.

CHRISTMAS DAY

Sugar and Spice’s Christmas Morning (RNZ National, 6.00am). As usual, a relaxed Christmas Day on RNZ National, starting with Katrina Batten and Catriona McLeod, aka Sugar and Spice. The day also includes He Touched Me: Elvis’s Gospel Music at 2.05pm and Tuning In at 3.04pm, in which historian Dominic Sandbrook tells the story of how radio broadcasting began in Britain. On RNZ Concert, there is A Christmas Spectacular at noon, a concert recorded in the Auckland Town Hall featuring Musica Sacra, the Auckland Philharmonia’s brass and percussion players, sopranos Kay Hall and Catherine Bloomfield, contralto Penny Watson, and John Wells and Nicholas Forbes on the organ.

BOXING DAY

Summer Report (RNZ National, 7.00am). Holiday programming begins: Caitlin Cherry and Tim Graham are the Summer Reporters this year, followed by Summer Noelle at 9.06am, with returning Irishwoman Noelle McCarthy. Matinee Idlers Phil O’Brien and Simon Morris are back at 12.35pm, and from 7.06pm, it’s Summer Nights with Katrina Batten. Rinse and repeat until next year!